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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
ISSUE 20.39.1 • 2023-09-26 By Susan Bradley Every month, I read headlines claiming that the latest patches for Windows 11 22H2 are causing major issue
[See the full post at: MS-DEFCON 4: Is Windows 11 really a disaster?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Yes, while finally saying they successfully installed, the Windows 11 22H2 September 2023 Cumulative and .NET updates took over 2 hours to install. August (and previous months) took a few minutes at most.
23H2 can be controlled with the InControl option. But it also fully enables Copilot and some may not want that. Also – and I’m giving you a sneak peak of an upcoming article – I couldn’t trigger Copilot unless I logged into a Microsoft account. So for all of you local account folks, pat yourselves on the back. You need a Microsoft account or an Azure (Entra) account.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I will say this, I severely miss the days when you could pick and choose which parts of the patch tuesday updates you want, so if a specific update was causing problems it was a simple ‘then don’t install it’, unlike now where you have to get all or none of the updates.
As for 23h2, great another major update that might take months to a year to get all the bugs out. Kinda wish microsoft would quit with these, since how often does the home user even need half the stuff they shove in these updates.
where you have to get all or none of the updates.
You don’t have to get all or none. Use WUmgr
When Windows Update (WU) searches for updates, the list of available updates is added to a cache. The cache is not updated until the next time WU searches. The list is static between searches. It is this static list you see in WU in the Settings App.
wushowhide runs WU search when you run the program. Thus, the list it produces is current, dynamic. It may not be the same you see in WU in the Settings App.
Windows Update and wushowhide both use Windows Update Service to search for updates. When you Pause updates in the Settings App, you disable WU Service and neither WU or wushowhide can search for updates.
If you click “Check for Updates” or “Resume Updates” from Pause, it initiates an immediate search/download/install of the updates.
There are several ways you can deal with this on Win Home.
+ You can use Windows internal tools: Set Metered Connections before you release Pause. Supposedly, MS will will not download the updates over Metered Connections. Then you can run wushowhide, hide what you don’t want, re-pause to initiate the hiding, then resume updates to cause another search that excludes the hidden updates.
+ The easier way, by far, is to use a third-party free program, WUMgr, to control the updates. There is a lot if information on this site about that.
No problems installing this month’s updates on 10 Pro with 22H2 x64 on two nearly identical machines. Installed them one at a time to avoid any unforeseen issues.
The .net update didn’t even require a reboot!
The monthly security update (KB5030211) was the usual amount of time to install on a single user machine (10 minutes from d/l to rebooted to the desktop), but on a multi-user machine (3 users), it took about 25 minutes for the same thing.
For those who don’t like/don’t want to use the new Windows Backup that was just installed, you can right click on it on the Start menu and select “More” and then “App settings”, which will take you to its settings page (which is titled “Windows Feature Experience Pack” at the top of the page…weird, huh?).
On that settings page there is one setting you can change to help reduce the possibility of it running against your wishes. There’s a switch that’s labeled “Background apps”. Take that switch and move it to the “OFF” position and you should be all set from that point on.
There’s also a service within services.msc that’s called the same thing (Windows Backup) and is set to a manual startup type. From what I’ve seen on my two machines, it hasn’t been running when I’ve first checked it. Within the Services snap-in, you can set it’s startup type to Disabled but, if you have a third party backup program, doing so might cause unwanted/unneeded problems.
I’ve also found an entry in the Task Scheduler called “WindowsBackup” (complete with no space between the two words). Take a look at that entry to see if there are any settings or specific tasks in there you might wish to disable. The window on the right side might even be empty if you don’t have any backup routine at all (NOT a good idea).
Hi @WCHS –
Yes, my post is indeed only about Windows 10…I currently don’t run Windows 11.
As far as finding the Windows Backup service, it’s easy. Simply open Task Mangler (Task Manager) and click on the tab at the top labeled “Services”. Don’t see any tabs in the Task Manager window? Then click the downward pointing arrow next to the words “More details” at the bottom of the Task Manager window.
Now, on the bottom of the window you’ll see a little link in blue that says “Open Services” and has a gear-looking symbol next to it. Click that link and you’ll be in the Services snap-in. Scroll down the list until you get towards the bottom, in the W’s. When you get to the services whose name starts with the word “Windows”, Windows Backup should be one of the first ones listed, as the entire list is in alphabetical order.
Double clicking on the Windows Backup listing will open its Properties dialog box, with the tab at the top labeled “General” highlighted by default. Please DO NOT click on any other tabs. The “General” tab is where you can start or stop the service and/or change its startup type if you so wish. Setting its’ startup type to Disabled may have some very undesired consequences, however, so I DON’T recommend setting it to this type of startup. I believe its’ default startup type is “Manual”.
Although my post refers to how I have done things in Windows 10, the procedure might be duplicatable on Windows 11, but no guarantees.
Hardened Windows user:
KB5030310 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems
No hiccups.
Now running Windows 11 Pro Version 22H2 (OS Build 22621.2361)
After restart, a cute “Copilot (preview)” icon popped up on my Taskbar.
But it needs help. Not only do I not have a Microsoft account user on this PC, I also don’t have Edge. Clicking on the icon gives me:
It seems that Copilot can only run from the cloud, and only via Edge—it ignored Firefox. I don’t foresee any problem for me from Copilot.
I just uploaded group policy and registry keys to block it.
So you got the icon even though you don’t have a MS account? Interesting.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Those who wants it don’t get it, those who don’t, get it
So you got the icon even though you don’t have a MS account?
Yep. It’s a an Update Preview (which means it’s coming soon), so I was sorta kinda expecting it. I know you’re against Preview Updates, but I have drive images to fall back on and am undeterred. And since AI is a humongous database, I was also expecting just a link, since it has to run from the cloud.
I’m also guessing it’s another way for Microsoft to prick and poke and persuade users to use a Microsoft account in order to get all the goodies (and for Microsoft to be even more intrusive). In that, I’m not interested—no MS account user to log in. I do use OneDrive, but that sign in is online, not local, and works via Firefox easily.
I have (all that I can find of) Microsoft’s telemetry blocked and/or uninstalled. O&O ShutUp 10 found 13 changes after the update, which I have reverted. However, most of them needed Edge in order to work, and I have Edge completely uninstalled.
Have been trying to edit the Registry as an Administrator to restore the File Explorer context menu, as described by Susan. After restarting the laptop there is no change in the context menu. Has anyone else tried it and had success?
Tbkid,
As noted at the outset of my post you partially quoted, I was referring to my experiences with updating and subsequently modifying an app on Windows 10, not Windows 11, therefore, the experience was exactly as I described in my post.
On Windows 10, right clicking on the Windows Backup listing of the Start menu produces a flyout with an option listed as “More”, and clicking on that produces another flyout that has an item on it labeled “App settings”. In Windows 10, clicking on that item labeled “App settings”, which is referring to the app settings for Windows Backup on Windows 10, produces a window that is titled, as I described in my post above, “Windows Feature Experience Pack”. This window has the settings for the Windows Backup app that can be modified in Windows 10. Exactly why it’s titled the way it is is currently a mystery, but that’s indeed what it says.
Please do not confuse this with Windows 11, which probably has a different experience when performing the steps listed. However, it’s entirely possible that those steps will not produce the same results in Windows 11 (for example, the window may be titled differently), and may not even be possible in Windows 11.
@WCHS –
My post number 2590629 above was directed to post number 2599966 from “anonymous”. It seemed as if that person didn’t understand that I was referring to Windows 10 and not Windows 11. The screenshot in my reply is from performing the procedure I describe in trying to get to the app settings for the Windows Backup app that now shows up on the Start menu for Windows 10.
To me, it seems as if this app was “backported” (possible at the last minute) from Windows 11 to windows 10, and therefore produces the screenshot I posted when one goes to look at the app’s settings. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future the title on the app’s settings screen will show the app’s name as does the settings screen for the other apps that are considered UWP apps or apps you get from the Microsoft Store.
Try as I have, I cannot get that same “Windows Experience Feature Pack” screen to come up in any of the other UWP apps from the Microsoft Store when I go to their settings screens…the screens all have the name of the actual app at the top of them.
P.S. Tread lightly when looking at the services’ properties and settings. I once bricked a computer in the distant past by mistakenly changing its logon type from a local system account to my user account with my own local password. 😳😭 Luckily I was able to get to a restore point from a couple of days before that and was back up and running in short order. 😅
I wonder if Susan & others are aware of that
We do try to keep up. Windows 11, Surface, and Windows Copilot this past Monday, and the very Alert to which this forum is connected. And more to come.
I allowed Windows Update to install 2023-09 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5030211) today and got Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 (OS Build 19045.3448) as a result.
I did notice brief episodes of online Outlook and Chrome browser network use crawling along but didn’t chase it down. I thought it was just the install slowing things down on my gigabit connection.
After the install rebooted I was presented with this unwelcome surprise:
Yeah, I clicked UNDO. What, you think I don’t know how to search from within a browser Microsoft? I have removed all the “Indexing Options” folders and yet it still indexes 10 items locally. What a waste. And I can manage to turn that “Search Box” on and off if I want with out your meddling Microsoft! Just by right-clicking on the taskbar and moving the pointer to Search:
The “Cloud” Windows Backup also appeared in the Start Menu apps list:
No option to uninstall it in right-click More > … . Right-clicking More > App settings brings up settings for “Windows Feature Experience Pack”. What??? Weird…
Also Microsoft Store > Library showed updates for Microsoft Store, Microsoft Photos, App Installer, and Windows Clock:
I always install the monthly updates in numerical order.
I ran MSRT (KB890830) first and check it’s log to make sure it didn’t find anything that would require me to reboot to finish the removal of; it didn’t find a thing, so I didn’t need to reboot.
I then installed the .NET update (KB5030180) which didn’t require a reboot after it installed, because WU gave me the green check mark, saying “You’re up to date” after the .NET update’s installation finished. However, the .NET runtime optimization routines (both 32 and 64 bit) kept running on and off for a few minutes after the installation routine was completed, so once they settled down, I decided to reboot out of an abundance of caution.
After rebooting and waiting about 15 minutes for everything to settle down, I then proceeded to install the monthly Windows security patch, KB5030211, which had WU asking for a reboot after its’ initial installation routine was completed, as with all monthly security updates for Windows.
Since I use wushowhide, I unhid these updates in wushowhide one at a time to allow WU to “find” them one at a time.
For some folks, this might sound like a lot of work, but I don’t mind it.
Sigh. I’ve found almost enough workarounds to make Windows 11 the productivity equivalent of a heavily tweaked Windows 10, for which I had found almost enough workarounds to be the productivity equivalent of a heavily tweaked Windows 8.1… Ad nauseum.
Sure, it’s hard to improve on something that’s gotten good over years of refinement. Hard to find new things that evoke the thought “now there’s something we’ve needed.”
When the OS developers get so arrogant as to eliminate the old (and decent) mechanisms without having fully developed their replacements, we get… Modern Windows.
Geez, at least optimize a few key parts of it so it’s even in the same ballpark as its predecessors, performance-wise.
Alas, unless one has no ongoing needs to keep up (which almost everyone does, such as working for a company that will support only the latest OSs sooner or later), one could be forgiven for just stopping all updates and keeping an old Windows 8.1 setup that absolutely had no need to reach anything on the Internet to actually work. I have such a setup dormant on a 11 year old workstation that hasn’t been powered up in quite a few years… Pesumably it will give me some computing capacity after an apocalypse, should I need any such capacity…
I can’t shake the feeling we’ve seen the golden age of general purpose computing come and go…
-Noel
Update 3 Win10 Pro desktops and a Win11 pro laptop with no problems seen.
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